


at swim, two boys

by Lise (thissugarcane), Tieleen



Category: WAP!
Genre: Early Work, M/M, alternative meta pop
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2001-05-23
Updated: 2001-05-23
Packaged: 2017-11-05 20:43:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,362
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/410824
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thissugarcane/pseuds/Lise, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tieleen/pseuds/Tieleen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><em>Swimming is exposure in an artificial setting.</em><br/>(co)-written as jubal and sachett.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> rick and izzy. title is not ours, but belongs to an extremely talented author named Jamie O'Neill. and really, you should read the novel instead of us.

_"Same-sex relationships with anyone when you are young entail extreme vulnerability. The first experience most of us have of devastating personal rejection is not with someone we want to date but with someone we want to befriend." -- Izzy._

-

It's high school and his name is Mark.

Izzy waves, hopelessly, and then trudges to catch the public bus downtown. There's no way, no way. Mark is going to the party at Derek Pryce's house tonight. He doesn't care about his English literature grade anyway. Izzy doesn't care about Mark's English literature grade either, but they could have got together with some people after and seen a movie. Rented a movie. Drank beer in the park and stumbled home.

Mark's busy tonight. Izzy is not.

-

They have to go swimming for gym.

Izzy hates swimming. The chlorine makes him feel ill, the change-rooms smell like bleach and slippery tile, and when people aren't yelling instructions over the splashing, they're eying your bathing suit and your legs and your tan and everything else. Swimming is exposure in an artificial setting. When you're trying really hard, your arms splash and water seeps into your ears and everything is muffled.

"Oh, come on," Rick says, rolling his eyes and pulling his car keys out. "Don't skip. You'll fail gym. I'll even give you a ride home afterwards."

Izzy gets in the car. "You need an air-freshener," he says, kicking his shoes off immediately and leaning his head out the window to yell goodbye at Mark. Mark smiles at him fine, and waves, but that's all.

"I don't care if I fail gym," Izzy says, watching the buildings going past. the pool is in the middle of the city, and people are always around, even during school events.

"yes you do," Rick says, "because they'll make you take it again."

"Gym shouldn't be mandatory," Izzy answers. "I'm in good shape, I don't pant running up the stairs." He claps his hands together. "Why do I have to parade around wet in front of the rest of the junior class?"

"To get a girlfriend," Rick answers absently, and pulls into a parking place. 

Izzy stares up at the pool. It's brick, like everything else downtown, and three stories, and he's frightened of it only because it's an unknown quantity. Life is full of rules, little waves and patterns and shorelines, boundaries. It's hard enough to keep the normal boundaries apart. "Can't we just go watch a movie?" he says to Rick.

"Don't you want a well-rounded education?"

"Only if it's well rounded in short-shorts."

Rick opens the door for him, and courteously steps aside for Izzy to pass in front of him. He does so, self-consciously. Rick asks, "are you doing anything later?"

The tile is wet, even slippery, even out here by the front door. Water has seeped in everywhere. His shoes squeak, and he tries to tread lightly, failing miserably. Squeak squeak squeak, announcing his presence.

Rick says, "are you just going home after this?"

There's an English Literature quiz tomorrow. Mark has his phone number. Izzy says, "probably." Then, rashly, "I'm trying to tutor Mark."

"You want to be friends with Mark?" Rick asks. Izzy steps in a puddle, and water seeps into his shoes.

-

"Listen," and Mark looks genuinely embarrassed. "I have practice tonight. I mean, I didn't want people to know, but my parents are really strict about it, they really want me to keep it up--"

Izzy nods as if he knows, even though his parents weren't strict about anything except him being who he was. Mark's parents want him to play the violin. Already, Izzy is grateful that English Literature is over, so they won't share any more classes. Mark is an unknown quantity, someone whose voice is muffled and indistinct.

"I'll see you over Christmas break," Mark says, but already Izzy is moving away. He won't see Mark over Christmas Break.

-

"When I was five," Izzy says to Rick, "I used to play over at this girl's house." He swings back and forth, holding the lit joint between two fingers. Rick leans over and clumsily steals it from his grasp. "We used to do shit like put a laundry basket over the cat."

"That's mean," Rick says.

"He liked it," Iz answers. His voice sounds far away, and the air is moving gently, swirling all around his head like currents of water. He's underwater, sinking, the sky so far away he'll never make it to the surface. "I used to play at Candace's house," he says. Candace is a bitch at school.

Rick is laying on his back, staring up at the stars. "I can't stand Candace."

"You know?" Izzy says. "No one makes any sense."

Rick is looking at his watch. "We'd better get home," he says, "or I'm gonna be grounded."

Izzy shrugs. "No you won't."

"Iz," Rick says. Christmas break is boring, Izzy decides. boring and full of bullshit. 

"I hate the pool," Izzy says, finally, a little alarmed for no good reason. Rick's going to be home late. There are lots of stars. The air is still swirling around his head, his cheeks are cold.

"I know," Rick says. "I don't really get it."

"Do you remember when I was best friends with Sam in ninth grade?" Izzy says. It's just because it has nothing to do with anything that he says it; it has nothing to do with the stars or the swing or the cool air around him or Rick still playing with the joint, though Izzy knows he won't try it, refusing to be in the same place Izzy is.

"I liked Sam," Rick says, absently. Izzy can remember suddenly realizing one day that he hadn't talked to Sam for two months outside school. Nothing happened, nothing ended, except everything is ending all of the time. 

He says, "Yeah."

Rick says, "Izzy." 

"Rick," he answers. The grass looks dark and distant all around him. He used to be allergic, years and years ago.

"I don't know how to ask the right things," Rick says, absently. He's still staring up at the sky. Izzy wonders if maybe he can actually see the surface. "Like, what's the right way to say stuff?"

Izzy falls off the swing, gently plopping onto the grass. The entire park is dark, ish, and traffic swirls all around. The only way he could ever traverse this boundary, find his way out from shore, is to get high. Izzy is a coward, and knows it. "Just blurt it out," he says.

Rick asks him, "are you ever coming out?" 

-

Mark calls once or twice.

Izzy doesn't call Rick.

At school in January, they're still in the same gym class. Rick stops Izzy in the hallway after class, one day, car keys swinging nervously from one finger. "It's like this," Rick says. "You have to at least try."


	2. Chapter 2

The music, the music's really bad. 

Rick can zone out on bad music, if he really tries. It's either that space where this part should have gone _here_ and this bridge should have gone over _there_ where the people with the pitchforks are, or it's just -- floating on sounds that are like a foreign language nobody wants to ever learn.

They're on the beach, and it was semi-crowded even before they got there, and it's too hot. He isn't zoning. It's just bad music.

Somebody smiles at him from over by the grill and he heads there. It's, Elly or Andy or, something. Three years of his life and he still doesn't know this guy, and he says, "hey," and smiles back and gets a paper plate with a hamburger on it for his trouble.

He doesn't think he wanted a hamburger, but it's fine. He shouts, "Thanks," over the music and smiles again, moving away. Andy or Elly is giving somebody else their somewhat-better-looking food and he isn't smiling this time, so Rick probably has reason to be more sure about his name.

Well. Izzy says graduation is about all the things you didn't do, but Izzy's got his head up his ass about the whole thing. Rick heads off to give him a hamburger.

-

Rick never meant to get tongue tied around girls. He isn't really, quite, right now. It's more like brain tied; his mouth is working fine.

Candace Harrison is the bitchiest person he knows, or the bitchiest person he doesn't really know, as the case may be. Candace Harrison also looks really good in a bikini, and some place between these two facts, Rick has lost his vocabulary, because he doesn't even know what he _wants_ to say.

He know plenty of people who don't have any problems reconciling these two facts. He's just finished going to high school with most of them. He probably shouldn't blame Izzy for this, but he does anyway.

Rick doesn't remember deciding he was always going to go the difficult route, and so it must be Izzy, because Izzy, he's pretty damned sure, has decided just that some time down the line.

"I'm not sure," he says, in the end. "We'll probably just head back when it's over and call it a night."

Candace flicks her eyes over to Izzy and back to him and gives him a raised eyebrow. He rolls his eyes and sighs to himself as she walks away.

"Fine, right, thank you, whatever."

"Who are you talking to?" Izzy says. Rick flops down by him, then stands up again. Really, the entire beach looks like a gigantic ad for Things You Didn't Do, all the little ways you didn't live out high school days like the people on TV. His legs are much too pale, he thinks, for his life to be anything like a TV show. "Let's go back in."

Izzy blinks at the sea, looks up at him. He's lying back on his elbows; it occurs to Rick that his tan is fine, but he still can't imagine Iz living in a TV show. Just about. "Are you going to swim like a dork again?"

"Yeah," Rick says, impatient. Izzy shrugs and stands up.

-

Rick is splashing around in the water. Izzy is floating around, either pretending he doesn't know him or finally getting into the Zen of the Swim.

"Rick," Izzy says, not bothering to open his eyes. "People out there think that an alligator got you and you're trying to get away."

"I care?" Rick says, surprised.

"Yes," Izzy says. 

"I do?" he says, in genuine bewilderment.

"You're in high school," Izzy says. He still hasn't opened his eyes.

Rick thinks about pointing out that he isn't, anymore, but doesn't.

It occurs to him that Candace Harrison, out there on the beach, whatever her odd reasons were for asking him out after not exchanging one word with him for three years, is probably pretty glad right now that he said no about that party.

He isn't actually going to stop because of that, because. No. There are things he's been living his life by for years now, and he's not going to back out on them. But the spinning's a little less fun now.

"Dude," Brian says when they reach shore again. "We thought a fish got you."

Rick smiles and gets his towel. He hasn't put on enough sun screen.

-

Izzy is absolutely, completely and shamelessly flirting with the nameless grill guy, and the funny thing is, Rick doesn't think the nameless grill guy knows.

Rick doesn't often see Izzy in this mode. Mostly, when he does, it's with Alex, and he knows that's mostly because it would never occur to Alex not to play along or to take it even one step further. This is like something else, like Izzy taking his bucket and going to play in a bigger sandbox, and there's something sad to it.

It's also funny as shit, and he lays his head on his hand and watches nameless grill guy gesture and grin while Izzy watches him and gestures back. It's not a dance he knows, and he can't quite tell where Izzy learned it.

Somebody stops next to him and crouches down. Rick smiles hello and talks about the relief of being free from Mrs. Donaldson, and finals.

-

He took a shower, but he can still smell salt on his skin, under the faint smell of soap that doesn't feel familiar even though it maybe should. It smells too sweet; maybe it belongs to Izzy's mom.

Izzy's back yard is only grassy in a half-assed way. The grass is faintly itchy at Rick's nape, but he doesn't have the energy to turn over.

"Any idea what time it is?" he says.

"Nah," Izzy says, drowsily. "Where's your watch?"

"I have no idea." Somehow, in the too-late hour -- whatever it is, it was too late before they ever headed out here -- and his brain that's still flowing around in the waves, that feels like a thing of wonder. "You want to go inside?"

"I don't think I can," Izzy mutters. Rick can maybe stand up, but the thought of pulling Izzy up too is enough to keep him lying there.

"Maybe we can sleep out here," he says.

"Be hot as hell in the morning," Izzy says. "And my mom'll freak."

The idea of Izzy's mom freaking out is entirely foreign. Then again, Izzy's like -- if Izzy was your kid, he'd probably be the kid you were always afraid would run away from home.

"Iz," he says.

"What," Izzy says, in a voice that says he knows Rick is going to use his own logic to make him stand up, and he resents it.

Rick didn't use to be sure of Izzy. He hadn't been, and then he had, for a long time now. Even at this late hour, though, he somehow knows that maybe saying it is not such a good idea.

"Your mom'll freak," he says instead.

"I just said that," Izzy says. Then, "I can't feel my legs."

Rick can, though he wishes he couldn't. Too much spinning and too many beers. They end up weaving their way in anyway. Rick is never going swimming again.

-


End file.
